Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

“Hey, Brian,” he said. “You need some help?”

Brian Hauser was about six-four, and he had to weigh at least 250 pounds. They didn’t call him “the House” for nothing. He was a little soft around the edges, one of those fat kids who manage to sprout up and become athletic for a few years, before losing the battle for good by the time they’re thirty.

“What do you want?”

“My associate here can open your lock, if you’d like,” Griffin said.

“Your associate ?”

As you can probably guess… yes, once I had opened up those padlocks from the antique store and saw how they worked, I had to show off to somebody . So I had grabbed Griffin’s lock one day and opened it for him. It had taken me about two minutes.

That was obviously a mistake. Which, as I stood there and watched him offer my lock-opening skills to Brian Hauser, I was about to pay for.

“Come on over,” Griffin said to me. “Show him how it’s done.”

The whole football team was looking at me now. I didn’t think I had much choice. I looked at Griffin and put an imaginary gun to my head, then pulled the trigger.

“Don’t be shy,” he said. “We’re all buddies here.”

He was showing them up, I thought. He was making fun of them and they didn’t even know it.

“What the fuck are you gonna do?” Brian said. “Try all thousand combinations?”

Actually sixty-four thousand, I thought, but who’s counting? I went to his locker and grabbed his lock. I pulled down and spun the dial past the fakes and felt for the real sticking point.

I won’t drag you through the whole thing, but here’s the basic idea. The combination to my gym lock happened to be 30-12-26, and the combinations to those two locks I bought at the antique store were 16-28-20 and 23-33-15. Notice how all of the numbers are either even or odd, first of all. Then notice how the first and last numbers are in the same “family,” and that the middle number is in the opposing family. By that I mean that 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, et cetera are one family, while 2, 6, 10, 14, 18, et cetera are the other family. Once you get the touch for finding the real last number out of the twelve “sticking points,” you can work backward from there, trying all of the combinations that start with a number in the same family, then a number in the other family, and then the final number. You can even learn to “super set” all of the second numbers once you know how that second cam can be bumped four numbers at a time without having to start the whole thing over. With a little practice, you can go grab most any combination lock from the junk drawer and have it open in a matter of minutes.

Got that?

So on Brian’s lock, I could tell that the last number of the combination was 23. So far so good. Clear the cams, spin to 3, and start on the super sets.

“Somebody get a hacksaw,” Brian said. “He’s gonna be here all day.”

“Give him a chance,” one of his teammates said. “Maybe he has ESP or something.”

“What the hell are you talking about? That wouldn’t be ESP.”

Everybody shut up, I thought. Go away and leave me alone for a few minutes. I worked it back to 9, then to 23, then to 13-23, then 17-23, working my way up the dial, bumping that second cam, feeling it move just the right amount and then staying smooth on the reverse to make sure I didn’t jar it out of position.

Wham! Brian slammed his fist on the locker next to me. “Are you seriously going to open this lock? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“He’s not telling you anything,” Griffin said. “In case you hadn’t noticed…”

“Yeah, okay. I get it. He’s a fucking mute.”

I looked up at him for one second, then went back to the lock. I started the second set, hoping to God that the second number wasn’t all the way up the dial. Hoping to God that I could do it at all. What the hell was Griffin thinking, anyway? Why the hell did I have to do this in front of everybody?

7 next. I went 7-13-23, then turned back to keep the set going.

I heard a door open.

“Shit, it’s Coach!”

Mr. Bailey, the football coach, came into the room. “What’s going on in here?” he said. “Brian, why aren’t you dressed?”

I dialed 7-17-23.

The lock opened.

“What are you doing, young man?” Coach Bailey said to me. “Are you his personal servant now? He can’t even open up his own locker?”

He was holding a playbook in one hand. I made a writing motion to him. He took a blank page from the book and handed it to me. Then he fished a pen out of his pocket. I wrote 7-17-23 on the paper and gave it to Brian. Then I gave the coach his pen back. Nobody else had said a word yet.

“Everybody outside while Mr. Hauser gets himself dressed,” Coach Bailey said. “Have you forgotten what week this is?”

That’s how it began. I remember it so well because I can trace so much of what would happen next right back to those few minutes. If I had had any idea…

But no, I hadn’t learned that lesson yet. I hadn’t learned that some talents cannot be forgiven.

Ever.

Connecticut

January 2000

It was the second time in my life I had been in handcuffs. The man lifted me to my feet and pushed me back inside the house. We stepped through the broken shards from the chandelier. Past the spreading pool of blood and what was left of the Ox’s body.

“Holy fuck,” the man said. “I can’t believe this.”

His partner was standing there in the foyer. He had come down the stairs, the shotgun still poised in the shooting position. The barrel was pointed at my chest.

“Put the gun down,” the first man said.

His partner didn’t move. He was looking at me now like he was in some kind of trance. That sick little smile still on his face.

“Ron, put the gun down!”

That seemed to snap Ron out of it. His eyes came back into focus, and he lowered his weapon.

“Ron, I don’t even know what to say right now. Did you call the police yet?”

Ron shook his head.

“Come on,” the man said to me. He led me into the kitchen and put me on one of the tall stools, next to the center island. He picked up the phone and started dialing. From where I was sitting, I could still see Ron standing out there in the foyer. He was looking down at the floor. At the carnage he had created.

The man got through to the police, gave them the address, told them to expect a horrible scene when they got here. But the last remaining suspect was in custody, he said. As I listened to him, I could feel the cold steel of the handcuffs biting into my wrists.

The man hung up the phone. “Ron, they’re on their way!”

He came over to me. He wiped his face with both hands and then leaned over the little sink that was set into the island. For a moment, I thought he was going to throw up, but he pushed himself back up and looked at me.

“What the hell just happened?” he said. “How many men did he kill? Four?”

The man went to the refrigerator and opened it. He pulled out a can of Coke and pulled the tab. Then he drained half of it in one gulp.

“Ron, what are you doing in there? Are you okay?”

He listened for an answer. After a few seconds, we could hear Ron saying something, but it sounded like he had moved farther away from us.

“Why don’t you come in here with us? Where are you?”

We started to make out the words. Something like, “The suspects were armed I saw the guns the suspects were armed I saw the guns the suspects were armed I saw the guns.” Over and over again.

“Holy shit,” the man said. Then he came over to me and put his can of Coke down on the island, right in front of me. He went behind me and undid one of the handcuffs. I had no idea what the hell he was going to do, until he brought the free cuff around and fastened it on the faucet, below the handle.